2009 Sustainability Street Comes to Phillip Bay!

In May 2009, we attempted to form the La Perouse Sustainability Group with Lynda, some of her contacts and our three households. On May 26, Lynda informed me that Randwick City Council was offering residents free compost bins and practical help in setting them up. This was the start of the Compost Revolution community initiative. Included in that email was the first word about something called Sustainability Street which was described as a project in which "friends, family neighbours or community group get together to learn how to reduce household waste, water and energy use and work on your own local sustainability related projects". I began making enquiries …….

In the meantime, the now named La Perouse/Phillip Bay Sustainability Group got together for a Winter Solstice BBQ at which three neighbouring households joined us began to discuss just what form our new group would take and just what we were going to do. On June 29, Richard Wilson, Randwick City Council’s, 3-Council Ecological Footprint Program, Project Officer, emailed me the details of the Sustainability Street FREE information session at the Randwick Ritz cinema complex on July 7. I jumped at this invite and registered immediately!!

Well, the Sustainability Street info night was most illuminating. My thoughts were crystallising and I began to catch hold of the vision. I renamed our group, Oorana Sustainability Group, for want of a better name, and reported to it about the info night writing, “I've put my hand up as a facilitator in my area of Phillip Bay. Hopefully we four households will provide the springboard for getting other neighbours involved. I'm thinking about basing it around the homes which face the park and also along Yarra Rd and Anzac Pde.” So Sustainability Street Phillip Bay was born. There was much to be done.

Richard invited attendees to submit an expression of interest to become a Sustainability Street. I was the first to reply! After a long wait, Frank Ryan, President of Sustainability Street Institute Inc. emailed me on August 29 about meeting us in September and conducting a “Train the Mentor” course. Unfortunately, I couldn’t join in for the first Skype session. Nevertheless, on September 19, I emailed the Phillip Bay Sustainability Street group it’s first official update in which I announced that I'd just started two Live Local pages, Sustainability Approach Comes To Philip Bay and Making Our Home Sustainable informing the world of our sustainable house project.

Frank sent me an instruction CD because I couldn’t attend any of the workshops via Skype or face to face. Bummer. Anna took up the cudgels but had to drop out because Java was born!! I, too, had to postpone any official stuff as a result of my involvement in the Masters Games and other pressures at home. So, Sustainability Street Phillip Bay reached a stalling point, but all was not lost .........

After I my triumph playing basketball in the Masters Games (scoring five points in five matches!) I was able to refocus on Susty St. On November 2009, as our first venture, we joined Randwick Council’s Compost Revolution, a yearlong project aimed at reducing food waste that goes into landfill. We took delivery of a 400 litre Aerobin, sharing it between our three households. Into it we put kitchen waste as well as other material such as newspapers, leaves and grass clippings, going to landfill thus preventing them going to landfill and releasing the potent greenhouse gas, methane!!!. Of course, our two neighbours contributed even more since their households contain children!!